UK and Canada Open Access 20070909

The Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) has just announced

the official adoption of the Green Open Access Self-Archiving Mandate

This is the 31st Green OA Mandate adopted worldwide, but the 1st in

North America. (Indeed, only one North American University --

l'Universite de Quebec a Montreal -- has signed the Berlin Declaration.)

In all, 14 departmental and institutional self-archiving mandates

plus 17 funder mandates have so far been adopted worldwide. In addition,

2 large multi-institutional mandates (Brazil and Europe) are in the proposal

stage, as are 4 proposed funder mandates (two of them in the US and very

big).

UK is still substantially in the lead for OA mandates adopted, but if

the pending US and European mandate proposals are adopted, OA will

have prevailed unstoppably worldwide.

The next big growth area will be the sleeping giant of university OA

mandates, fueled by both the OA movement and the Institutional Repository

movement. The UK universities and the European ones are moving in

concerted directions here. Time for US university provosts (who signed

in support of the FRPAA Green OA mandate proposal) to go into action

too!

Stay tuned...

Stevan Harnad

AMERICAN SCIENTIST OPEN ACCESS FORUM:

UNIVERSITIES and RESEARCH FUNDERS:

If you have adopted or plan to adopt an policy of providing Open Access

to your own research article output, please describe your policy at:

OPEN-ACCESS-PROVISION POLICY:

BOAI-1 ("Green"): Publish your article in a suitable toll-access journal

OR

BOAI-2 ("Gold"): Publish your article in an open-access journal if/when

a suitable one exists.

AND

in BOTH cases self-archive a supplementary version of your article

in your own institutional repository.